In late June, the Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing on "The Right Care at the Right Time: Ensuring Person-Centered Care for Individuals with Serious Illness."Atul Gawande was one of the three witnesses. Among his points:
- Our 50 year experiment in medicalizing mortality has failed.
- Medicine fails to recognize that people have priorities other than just living longer. But we do not ask what they are.
- Care is often out of alignment with the patient's deepest wises.
- Care is almost entirely focused on control of disease. But when asked people choose less toxic care, hospice sooner, and few ICU days.
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